A new home is being sought for thousands of recordings and manuscripts of the works of renowned Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. The collection was owned by conductor Roman Matsov, a close collaborator of Shostakovich. The recordings are stacked in the Estonian apartment where Matsov lived before his death in 2001, aged 84. Matsov's son, Mark, is having trouble paying rent on the flat and fears the collection could lose its home. Yevgeny Pasternak, son of Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer Boris Pasternak, warned that if the archive was not saved "one of humanity's most important cultural legacies will perish".

That sound you hear in the background is me wincing in pain. If no one at the LOC answers my call, I know that Alex Ross has some experience with storing recordings.